7 Musical Artists and Bands Celebrating Sustainability
The lives of chart-topping singers and bands are busy and can be impactful – in more ways than one. They have a globe-spanning reach with millions of followers who know their lyrics by heart and wait in long lines for their concerts, but all that touring and travel has an environmental impact too.
These concerts and events provide entertainment and an opportunity to connect with like-minded people – not to mention the large amount of jobs they create.
But there’s no turning away from the music industry’s heavy environmental toll, creating emissions and waste from jetting around the world, crisscrossing countries in big buses, rigging elaborate setups for concerts, offering tons of merchandise, as well as selling food and drinks that create a lot of trash.
Many musicians and others in the industry have recently become very aware of the environmental impact and are turning these events around to be more sustainable.
With the huge following these stars have, it’s also an opportunity to spread an important message about looking after the environment.
Here are a few standout stars who have started greening their tours and spreading eco-friendly messages.
A List of Sustainable Musicians and Bands
This list features amazing artists and bands who are setting the bar for incorporating sustainability into their influence, tour, and music.
P!nk
A musical artist going green is P!nk. The singer has teamed up with REVERB, an organization that works with music acts to make their tours as low impact as possible.
Their measures to make concerts more sustainable include the incorporation of reusable water bottles and water refill stations to negate the need for single-use plastic; reusable or compostable items in catering and on buses; donating excess food and unused toiletries to local shelters, and raising money for climate projects.
Pharrell
Sustainability has become a hot topic in fashion as the industry seeks to incorporate circular methods and sustainable materials to lessen the impact of this heavily polluting industry.
Singer and songwriter Pharrell Williams has jumped on board, collaborating with Bionic Yarns to release a sustainable denim collection. However, Pharrell’s most interesting contribution has to be in the form of the song ‘100 Years’.
In 2017, the song was recorded onto only one record, made from clay. This record is in a safe that is indestructible unless submerged in water. If human-induced climate change continues unabated, causing sea levels to rise further, the record will be submerged in water, destroyed, and never heard.
Billie Eilish
Nine-time Grammy and two-time Oscar winner Billie Eilish has also worked with REVERB for her concerts. Additionally, she has brought sustainable practices into her products.
These include the use of recycled materials for vinyl albums; using deadstock, organic, and recycled fabrics and non-toxic dye for her merchandise clothing, and utilizing packaging made from FSC-certified recycled paper, post-consumer waste, and recycled pre-consumer fiber.
Coldplay
Once upon a time singers and bands sent out riders demanding all kinds of weird and wonderful things in their dressing rooms. There’s probably still a lot of this going on, but Coldplay has turned the tide on this practice, sending out a sustainability rider to the venues where they will be performing, requesting best environmental practices.
For their current tour, Music of the Spheres, the band has pledged to reduce their direct emissions by an ambitious 50% compared to their previous tour, with unavoidable emissions drawn down according to the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting.
Furthermore, the band uses renewable energy for most of its stage production. Together with BMW, Coldplay has developed the first mobile, rechargeable show battery.
This helps power the show with renewable energy. How do the batteries stay charged? By installing kinetic mats. When fans dance on these mats, their movement is converted to energy that helps keep the show powered.
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran has started his greening mission at home by transforming a field near his house into a wildlife meadow, establishing a beehive, and creating a wildlife pond filled with newts and salamanders.
His next step is to expand this mission to the rest of his native country, rewilding England by buying land in which to plant and preserve more trees.
While Sheeran’s heart is in the right place and he understandably wants to do something to offset the footprint that touring creates, his rewilding ambition has raised concerns with locals, as this form of rewilding can threaten farmers’ livelihoods and exacerbate rural housing crises.
Neil Young
For Neil Young, going green is about more than just lowering the impact of concerts – although this is important to him as well.
Young believes in raising awareness about Earth’s plight through his work and during his decades-long career has explored environmental issues, amongst many others, with his music.
His song ‘After the Gold Rush’ entreats listeners to “look at Mother Nature on the run / in the 1970s”. Through the years, he has adjusted the lyrics of this song to reflect the current decade.
Currently, it is sung as “look at Mother Nature on the run / in the 21st century”. He has also been vocal in his support of renewable energy, small farmers, and tackling the climate crisis. In 1985, he co-founded Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp.
This organization holds an annual benefit concert that helps raise money for American farmers.
Dave Matthews Band
Musicians are going green for many reasons, and there’s no denying that one of those is that it helps their image. But the Dave Matthews Band has been going green for years now.
They were one of the first bands to work with REVERB and continue to work with them to this day, incorporating practices such as composting, upcycling, and recycling; using biodiesel for tour buses and trucks; providing reusable bottles, mugs, and refill stations backstage, and making use of local “farm-to-stage” food for catering purposes.
The band also has an ongoing partnership with The Nature Conservancy to support reforestation.
Hopefully overtime more artists will realize the importance of sustainability and incorporate eco-friendly practices into their tour, music, activities, and merch!
MEET THE AUTHOR
Claudia Hauter is a South African writer, copy editor, and content creator with degrees in Drama and Anthropology. She works in television managing web content. When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s walking her dog, finding small businesses and markets to support, or attracting butterflies and bees with her vegetable garden. Learn from Claudia on Twitter or Instagram.
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